To be honest I found this short film incredibly creepy in terms of sound and production design in comparison to the plot of the film, which really played with my head in terms of genre. The feel of the film indicated horror/thriller, however the plot was quite innocent probably closer to a comedy than anything else. Therefore I felt the film was really playing with audience expectations. The music was deep, windy and chimey sounds, which lead to a monotonal deep hum when the image cuts to santa. The cinematography reflects this through the dark lighting scene, and the creaky opening of the door letting in yellow light, which is a great shot and yet one commonly seen and experienced in a horror film.
creaky door, typical of the horror film genre
The expressions on the little kids head reminded me of the little kid in The Shining- incredibly creepy and the father’s appearance with glasses and thin appearance to be quite bizaar. However, in saying this I did like it because I thought it built up a horror-like tension and then backfired it to disorientate audience expectations. I honestly thought something horrible was going to happen to this child. Yet, it didn’t. There was one amazing shot in this film where the camera tracks down the hallway in what looks like a track in zoom out effect which also works in disorientating the audience and looks amazing as it focuses in on the family in the dining room, where in restricting your view to only see through the doorway you don’t know what to expect at the end, which again heightens the suspense.
tracking zoom shot down a corridor of unexpected possibilities
Basically, what this film does is set up the mother and father as quite menacing through the music and the bizaar interaction at the beginning where there is a cut to the mother with this rather sinister smile on her face heightened by a shift in music to a faster paced darker piano sound.
sinister expectation
In fact what I think makes this film is the sound design, which heightens the film to convey all emotions on the mother and father as sinister. The last scene is quite lovely where the camera as I said previously does the track down the hallway and what is revealed is this happy family, with an obvious change in set design characteristics. The lighting is warmer and the costumes have changed into something much brighter such as the mother in a red dress. The feel in this scene is completely in contast to those previous.
happy bright family
In terms of exploring this film in terms of our own production of Doughnut I think it will be vitally important to have this mood shift as soon Bernard comes back into the office after killing Jonathan- things should be brighter, as things are better for Bernard. The beginning he is in this bleak environment: the lighting should be dull and everything should be monotonal, when he returns everything should be brighter to reflect his own mood of personal achievement. Therefore Son of Santa helped me think about how we can achieve a mood shift, making the audience aware visually of changes rather than through dialogue, which is done extraordinarily well in Son of Santa.
Reference:
shots from: Mann, T. Son of Santa , 2006
Eliza (our director) brought our attention to a shot film called Signs that I think encapsulates a near perfect example of our main character Bernard, except with one exception he lacks the murderous quality that we need to capture in Bernard. Jason the main character in Signs is obviously over the monotonous pain of going to work everyday highlighted through the bleak sad expression on his face as he goes through the process of going to work (captured through a montage of him getting to work). Once at work it is obvious that he is an outcast they laugh he doesn’t, when he falls over everyone laughs. It is Jason’s bleak face that would be perfect, especially this beautiful shot where Jason is positioned in the centre of the frame with a look of total unhappiness on his face, which cuts to a panning shot of people at work in confined cubicles. It is this cut that expresses explicitly the isolation Jason feels at work. Everything about Jason’s acting perfectly shows his unhappiness through the dragging of his feet across the ground to the sigh and frown that spands his whole demeanour when he sits down at his desk, the camera close-up to this obvious example of misery. This is how I would imagine Bernard’s demeanour around the workplace, where I think the key, which Signs captures so precisely is the contrast between Jason and his co-workers. Elly the writer of our script went even further with Bernard’s character by making him older- left behind by his generation and also the advancements in technology, there is more at stake- people have lost respect for him.
The charm of Signs is the way so much is conveyed through action; the dialogue at the absolute bare minimum, which is also captured by Elly in this script, especially in the last scene as I have discussed previously. I went on Elly’s blog and also saw that she had made a comment about Signs saying the things she liked about it was the thwarted desire when Jason’s love interest disappears. Instead of love Elly uses gluttony in her script, which represents routine in Bernard’s character disrupted by Jonathan, who’s motivation is to mock and destroy Bernard’s happiness.
I will continue to look for short works as well as longer works in terms of getting ideas for our production. It’s not about stealing ideas it’s about gaining knowledge and researching. Thinking about what is the best way to do things in terms of turning Elly’s script into sound and vision.
Filed under: reflection | Tags: brainstorming, formatting, script, short film
CeltX is the greatest download ever, everyone should use it to write their scripts it’s AMAZING. It does all the formatting for you, especially putting in all the appropriate indentations and the continued elements. However, the reading from last week is still really important because you need it for all the parenthesis stuff and how to do flashbacks and so forth. However, it terms of time saving CeltX is great and allows you to save as a pdf file. It also allows you to view your script in several ways, where you can single out the dialogue and the action if you just want to work on one or the other, and futher allows you to single out just one character’s dialogue so it’s pretty terrific.
I thought that I just needed to start writing my script otherwise I never would start because I know what I’m like. I just jumped on the computer and began. I continuously wrote for around 2 hours I think and good about 4 and a half pages of drafting. It is not over-looked in anyway, however I’m really happy with my storyline, which I have again modified in response to Christine’s suggestions. Basically, I need Ryan’s desire to be thwarted even further if she just sold his records that would be it so I made it that she bought the record that he want more than anything but tells him he cannot have it because by not having it it will prove to her that she is more important than his records. Ryan then because he thinks that she is telling him that if he finds the record he can have it searches for it and returns to find her with divorce papers in hands and therefore it is this great moment where he has the record and she has the divorce papers and they just look at each other. However, just thinking about it now I’ve changed my mind about a few things. Firstly, in my script (which you can find the draft of here) it is revealed to the audience before it is revealed to Ryan about the divorce papers. However, I think there will be way more drama if the camera follows Ryan on his search and returns and the audience finds out at the same time as Ryan, so it creates a twist and inherently makes it more DYNAMIC. I also need to go back through both character’s dialogue to make sure there is nothing that doesn’t sit true to the character. I also think that it might be unnecessary to have the other record room, because I might be able to keep the location to a singular room, which would be easier and require less production design.
I mean still there is a lot of work to do, it is just an initial drafting effort, but atleast it’s a start. I’ll keep you posted. On a final note BLADE RUNNER has a fantastic opening screen description that I read on script-o-rama of course. It is filled with highly visual language and I feel like I can see the scene, because it is so visually detailed using metaphor, it’s beautifully dynamic. It also stimulates some ideas for my scene descriptions. I really want to add temperature to my scene, a sense of the weather because I want to create a large amount of tension between the characters, even before they begin arguing, this also leads me to believe that maybe the house should be messy. I want the situation to be fuelled and dramatic, but not over the top. It’s kind of instinctive as well. The characters are stuck in something they can’t escape.
It's magnified and deeply revealed. Flecks of green
and yellow in a field of milky blue. Icy filaments
surround the undulating center.
The eye is brown in a tiny screen. On the metallic
surface below, the words VOIGHT-KAMPFF are finely
etched. There's a touch-light panel across the top
and on the side of the screen, a dial that registers
fluctuations of the iris.
The instrument is no bigger than a music box and sits
on a table between two men. The man talking is big,
looks like an over-stuffed kid. "LEON" it says on
his breast pocket. He's dressed in a warehouseman's
uniform and his pudgy hands are folded expectantly in
his lap. Despite the obvious heat, he looks very cool.
The man facing him is lean, hollow cheeked and dressed
in gray. Detached and efficient, he looks like a cop
or an accountant. His name is HOLDEN and he's all
business, except for the sweat on his face.
The room is large and humid. Rows of salvaged junk
are stacked neatly against the walls. Two large fans
whir above their heads.
For our short film video production we either work in groups of 3 or 4, with the roles being: director of photography, director, sound and producer. If there are three people in the group everybody co-producers.
In terms of what I think I would be best at would be producer because I’m organised and through high school I was always given producer roles because I was good at putting everything together and keeping everyone organised. However, I always found this task highly stressful because there is a lot on your plate. However, at the same time it is very rewarding because it enables you to be in-control of the production, because you have to pass everything. Yet, I find it a bit uncreative as well because you’re not the creator, you don’t have the creative control.
This leads on to the director, which is the creative control of the production. They make all the creative decisions and therefore direct all the people that are part of the creativity of the production over all areas, including sound, vision and acting. The director transforms the script into life with sound and colour and movement. The prospect of directing excites me, but like the producer you have a lot on your plate. You’re the creative director. I would really like to direct, but I’m not sure if I have enough faith in my decisions to be a good director. Directors have to make instant dicisions if things go wrong and think on the spot about things and I think that maybe I’d always be questioning myself. Yet, if I can get over this I believe I have the right knowledge to make the right decisions and know enough about film to director a good shot film.
Director of Photography is something that I would love to do. This is the position that I would choose if it was based on what I would like to do. The thing I like about Cinematography is that you are only focused on one thing. You think visually. In all my script development up to now I’ve been thinking about everything visually. For example I wanted to end my film with Ryan sitting in the record room because I thought it would look great visually and I’m already thinking about how the camera slowly pans back from a close-up of him to encompass the whole room and express his state of mind. I figure if I’m already thinking so visually about my production, then maybe Cinematography will be something that I would be good at. I also think that I would learn a lot from this role as I’ve never done it before but at the same time think I would be an asset in this role because I’m already thinking about it.
Sound is the thing that I’m least interested in but I’m really not sure why because I love music and love movies that encompass music and have a great soundtrack. To me operating sound would be incredibly tedious and I don’t know if my ear is good enough to tell if the sound is good or not. Everytime I go to a gig and my dad complains about sound quality I have no idea what he is talking about, because I think that it sounds fine. This would probably make me an unreliable sound person. The only positive I could gain about doing this role is learning about sound because like Cinematography you are focused on one thing, the sound, you are listening. It is somewhat interesting because people consider sound to be a minimalist aspect to the film production.
In looking at the blog for film & tv 2010 it suggested you write a blog about what is a short film good for? and why have they chosen for us to do one? Short films are pithy, they require you to get to a point and fast, because you don’t have the time to go into a large amount of detail. Short films are good for character driven storylines, rather than event driven, because you cannot have a large amount of events or even show a large event unfolding in a short period of time. They require characters to drive the plot. It is also good for the creative flow of the filmmaker because it requires them to be extremely precise with every tiny detail, because the last thing you want is something to be misconstrued because every detail takes up a large proportion of screen time, especially in something that is 5 minutes long (one minute is one fifth of the production). It also challenges the traditional style of filmmaking, where there has to be a beginning, middle and end, conflict, resolution, turning-points, etc. There is a lot that needs to be encompassed in a short amount of time. This question is so hard to answer in terms of what is short film good for? Because in most cases it is to show people what you have got in a short amount of time, so I think it is more the challenge that makes it intriguing. Lots of filmmakers start in short film or video clips because they don’t have the money to produce a feature length film. Therefore that really is another reason why short film is good; it can be produced on a relatively small budget.
I think the reason behind chosing the main assignment for this subject to be producing a short film is that we can be professional in our approach even though we don’t have a large or any budget to fund it. It still uses the same production values as a full-length film, but challenges you to be pithy in your approach. In terms of professional production skills it teaches you to run a full production to the best of your ability and because we only have a limited amount of time, it requires you to perform to a deadline, which would be a requirement in any film production, whether short or feature-length.
I think I will need to revist this because I don’t think I have grasped the full nature of short film. I think I require myself to do a lot more research!
